Out of Sight (3 page)

Patrick took the cue, caught Daniel and held him firmly. ‘That'll do, young man. Let's find a quieter game now.'

But as Daniel struggled to escape his grip, Patrick's foot slipped slightly on the short grass and he trod backwards a single step. He easily regained his balance, but too late to stop Agnès scrambling to her feet in terror, crying, ‘They're going to fall! They'll fall!'

Before Patrick could get to her to reassure her, let her
touch her grandson and feel for herself that he was perfectly safe, Geoffrey was beside him. ‘For God's sake, get that child out of here!' he hissed. ‘Can't you see he's upsetting her? Take him away.'

Stretched out on either side of them were the smooth, massive humps of the South Downs, above them a vault of clear blue sky. There was nowhere to go.

Supper that evening was a subdued affair. Agnès commented apologetically that maybe they'd all had a little too much sun, while Geoffrey failed to grumble even about the lasagne being vegetarian. In an effort to distract them, transport them to another time and place, Belinda cheerfully asked what plans they had for Josette's ninetieth birthday. Maybe they could all go to France together? For a moment no one spoke, then Geoffrey observed that Agnès usually went on her own to visit her mother. ‘Now Josette is so old,' he added, ‘she may find it confusing to have strangers descend on her en masse.'

‘Strangers?' queried Belinda. Patrick parried her look of incredulity.

‘She's as sharp as she's ever been,' answered Agnès. ‘I'm sure she'd like a celebration. And she loves children. Doesn't she, Patrice?'

‘Yes, Maman.'

‘You were very happy there with her, just the two of you, weren't you?'

‘Yes, Maman. Always.'

‘She would love Daniel, just as she loved you. And me.' Agnès turned to Belinda. ‘My papa died at the very end of the war, before I was born.
Ma mère
never remarried. Once I left France to marry Geoffrey, she was alone.'

‘It seemed a kindness for us to let Patrick spend the school holidays with her,' expanded Geoffrey, and Patrick recognised the familiar dialogue. ‘Much better for a boy to have space to run around instead of being cooped up in an apartment.'

Patrick saw Belinda's head shoot round in surprise. ‘You never said you spent holidays with your grandmother.'

It was Agnès who answered, in well-worn phrases. ‘It gave him continuity. It would have been unnerving for him to keep coming home from school to different houses, different countries. Josette offered him familiarity, a home from home … didn't she,
mon chéri
?'

‘Yes, Maman.'

‘You were seven when you started boarding, weren't you?' asked Belinda. Patrick nodded dumbly, concentrating on swirling his wine around the glass.

‘British executives who worked abroad had their children's public-school fees paid by the company,' Geoffrey informed her, with subtle pride.

‘So when did you three get to see each other?'

‘I didn't spend the whole of every vacation in France.'

‘And remember, I was travelling on business all the time,' added Geoffrey, seeking to clarify matters. ‘I wouldn't have been around much anyway.'

‘So it was Josette who more or less brought you up?' Belinda made no attempt to disguise her amazement at only now discovering this about her husband.

‘I told you I used to stay with her,' protested Patrick. ‘And Maman used to come, too, sometimes.'

‘Yes, but I thought it was just an occasional visit. I've not heard you talk about her as if she was such an important part of your life. I never realised—'

Patrick could see that Belinda was stumped. He wouldn't have blamed her if she had risen from the table, picked up her violin and begun to play, immersing herself in a language that made perfect sense and evading the chaos contained in this ostensibly sensible conversation. But instead, she was staring at him, her forehead uncharacteristically furrowed.

‘You didn't even invite her to our wedding!'

‘She doesn't speak English,' explained Geoffrey patiently. ‘Never leaves France.'

Patrick gave Belinda the open, candid look he gave his patients when they were confused or distressed. ‘I guess a child's memory of time is different. I was pretty young.'

She nodded, but continued to observe him as if for the very first time. He shrank from her sharp gaze, imagining himself as some chemically stained organism taped under a microscope.

‘Well,' said Geoffrey, leaning back in his chair, ‘that was quite a meal, Belinda. Thank you.'

The expression on Belinda's face as she looked at them
all around the table, thought Patrick, was the same as when she accidentally struck a dissonant note on an instrument. But, with a slight shake to clear her head, she set about removing the plates. As she went to the fridge to fetch the apple snow she had made for pudding, he became aware that he was breathing through his mouth, that his heart was beating rapidly. Fearing to give himself away, he fought the urge to make a run for it.

After Agnès and Geoffrey had gone up early to bed, he told Belinda he would clear up. That done, he sat at the kitchen table, tracing the grooves in the scrubbed pine surface with a finger, waiting for silence above. Only when he hoped his wife was fast asleep did he go upstairs.

It was with relief that Patrick shut himself in the car the next morning for his drive to Ditchling. Belinda didn't teach on a Monday, so Daniel didn't go to the childminder. It had been arranged that Geoffrey and Agnès would stay until Tuesday, but although Patrick had re-scheduled some of his patients, he apologised that he nonetheless had to go to work on Monday, though he would come home early. Meanwhile, Belinda would take them out somewhere, maybe to Charleston Farmhouse or Firle Place.

At Ditchling he parked in the yard and walked down the side of the building, opened the door to his office, and breathed in the still air of rooms unoccupied over the weekend. The solitude acted like a balm, and by the time his first patient arrived, promptly at half-past ten,
he felt less bruised, more able to deride his susceptibility to his parents' dysfunctions. Really! So his poor mother's anxiety had developed into Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and his father, given half a chance, tended to be avoidant. But hadn't he escaped from all that, made his own life? He had stopped considering his parents as ‘home' when he left school. Though he admitted that marriage had been largely Belinda's idea, he'd been content to go along with it. He loved being a father and everything seemed to be working out pretty well. Now, sitting opposite him was a forty-year-old man in loose faded jeans and work boots, a local builder, who had originally come to him with a bad back and open scepticism and was now arriving at the point where he could admit to having sexual problems. What could be better, on a Monday morning, than to win the trust of a decent, unassuming man like this, and perhaps even be able to help him?

And yet, as the day wore on, that ability to help, to heal, seemed to elude him. All practitioners got stuck from time to time, hit an invisible wall when none of their insights proved useful, when none of the selected remedies, so carefully thought out, appeared to make the slightest difference. And he knew that at such a disjunction his colleagues would advise confidence, clarity and vigour, the courage to see homeopathy as not just a science but an art – an art that took depth and originality to accomplish well. He was experienced enough not to blame his patients for their
lack of beneficial response: it was he who was stuck, not they. And it wasn't as though he had far to look for the reason! His negative state of mind had left him susceptible to an accumulation of unresolved past actions which had imprinted on his vital force. When he had time, he would consult a colleague for a remedy to dispel such influences but, meanwhile, the awkward frustrations of the morning forced him to acknowledge how much his ability to heal others sustained him, too. Yet he resented the insight. He needed such self-awareness to remain unthought, to stay just out of reach, so that the alchemy of the healing encounter remained unself-conscious. The moment that healing became a conscious act of will, an act, then something precious, the something of value he offered his patients, was irretrievably lost.

And so, when he reached home, even though his family had enjoyed their day out, he was unable to shake off his impatience. Agnès was touched that he had remembered to bring her the promised Rescue Remedy and was certain it would do her good, even though she was equally certain she didn't need rescuing. Over dinner, the others chatted about their visit to Daniel's favourite zoo park, fondly recounting his delight in the otters' aquatic acrobatics, and Patrick admired the scarf Geoffrey had bought Agnès in the Charleston shop. Yet, despite the positive mood of the evening, Patrick could barely wait for Tuesday morning when his parents would leave.

*

It started in the spare bedroom with a tussle over who should carry the suitcase down. As Patrick had anticipated, with Agnès' anxiety provoked by their imminent parting, breakfast had been tense. Now Geoffrey took his son's appearance in the doorway as a challenge to his dominant position in the pride of lions and, glad of a release for his tension, began roaring that he wasn't so past it yet that he couldn't carry his own luggage! So Patrick followed his father submissively down the stairs to the hallway, where Belinda was getting Daniel ready to go with Patrick once Agnès and Geoffrey had departed.

‘What's the best route onto the M23?' Recognising Geoffrey's man-talk as a peace offering, Patrick gave the appropriate responses. Agnès came out of the kitchen, where she had insisted on washing up the breakfast things, and stood watching uncomprehendingly as Belinda put on Daniel's shoes. She turned to Patrick. ‘Doesn't the infant stay home with you?'

‘Patrick's working,' explained Belinda.

‘Oh,' exclaimed Agnès, relieved. ‘He goes with you to work. I didn't realise.'

‘He comes with me, yes.' Patrick looked at Belinda, willing her to interpret correctly his appeal to say no more.

But her head was bent over the shoes. ‘Patrick drops him off at the childminder,' she said carelessly.

‘The childminder?' queried Agnès. ‘I don't understand.'

‘We should get on the road,' chivvied Geoffrey. ‘Everything's packed up.'

‘You leave him with a stranger?'

‘Hardly a stranger!' said Belinda. ‘Her name's Christine. Daniel has a good time there with the other kids.'

‘Go and powder your nose, or whatever you need to do,' Geoffrey ordered his wife.

‘He's little more than a baby!'

Belinda straightened up to put an arm around Agnès, giving her a hug. ‘Honestly, Agnès, he's absolutely fine with Christine. We'd never leave him if he wasn't. Would we?'

She appealed to Patrick, but he found it impossible to look at any of them. He longed to bend down and pick up his son, hug the child to him, but he was frozen.

‘You never told me he went to a childminder,' cried Agnès, ‘to a woman you barely know.'

‘Time to go!' Geoffrey put in desperately.

But Agnès could not be distracted. ‘How can you be sure if he's happy or not?' Her voice rose. ‘You can never tell how your child is, if you are not there!'

Geoffrey dived at Daniel, scooped him up from where he sat contentedly at his mother's feet, and thrust him at Patrick. ‘Take him away! Get rid of him!'

Startled, Daniel began to cry. Patrick cradled him, cradling himself, too, against the little body.

‘What's wrong with you?' Belinda demanded of Geoffrey, but he was hauling Agnès towards the door.

‘Get in the car! We're going now. We have to go.'

‘No, wait!' Belinda's words made Geoffrey pause in the doorway. ‘Please wait.'

Patrick could hardly bear to look at Agnès standing distraught beside her husband. He knew what he would see: his mother was alternating between wringing her hands in a compulsive gesture that seemed almost comic and checking the buttons on her blouse. He sensed rather than saw Belinda's mute appeal for him to say something, do something.

‘Stay and have another cup of tea. Don't leave like this,' Belinda begged, while he continued to stare fixedly down into Daniel's soft, downy hair.

Geoffrey now spoke more gently. ‘You can see it's hopeless. Best we get off. Give you a ring tonight.' He picked up the suitcase and shepherded his wife outside, leaving Belinda to follow them out to their car and see them off.

Patrick stood in the hallway, rooted to the spot, holding Daniel, slowing his breathing as he counted each golden hair, until he heard the crunch of gravel as the car drew away and Belinda returned. ‘What was all that about?' she asked, stroking Daniel's head. Patrick said nothing. ‘Poor baby,' she crooned. ‘Silly old them. Just silly-billies, aren't they?' Calmed, the child nestled his head in under Patrick's chin, his thumb in his mouth. ‘He'll probably sleep in the car,' Belinda said to Patrick. ‘Maybe you should just go, then he can drop off. He'll have forgotten all about it by the time you get to Christine's.'

Patrick's next conscious action was turning his key in the lock beside the brass name-plate and entering his Ditchling
office. The rooms already felt close and airless and he opened the windows before crossing to his desk to check his diary for the day. Seeing an extra name scribbled in, he remembered that a regular patient had rung the day before requesting an urgent consultation, and he'd agreed to fit her in over his lunch break. Two other appointments were with new people, which he always enjoyed. He looked at his watch, surprised to see he still had ten minutes to himself.

He was mildly aware of a dragging undertow of distress but, determined not to let it rise to a point where it would disturb his interaction with his patients, he turned on the computer. He would chase a few late payers before the first arrival, when it would be vital to block out all personal distractions, all conscious self-reflection. It wasn't that he didn't listen to people's actual words, but he needed simultaneously to attend to tone, hesitation, body language, in which he could perceive at an innate, intuitive level what they were striving to communicate. He always looked forward to entering the set phase of solid concentration which an appointment with a new patient demanded. He found the experience intensely calming. He once heard a heroin addict describe on television the sense of well-being that flushed through his system on taking the drug, and recognised the same cravings in himself: he thought how lucky he was to have discovered a way to self-medicate without opiates.